The Utah Democrat has hung onto his heavily Republican seat for more than a decade — weathering the 2010 tea party wave, George W. Bush’s election, even favorite son Mitt Romney at the top of the ticket.

Now, one of the GOP’s star 2012 recruits, Mia Love, is back for a rematch after falling 768 tantalizing votes shy of ousting Matheson in November. And Republicans believe the eighth time will finally be the charm to turn the Salt Lake County-area seat red.

They believe a more experienced, better-known candidate, along with the hiring of campaign manager Dave Hansen, Sen. Orrin Hatch’s top strategist and former state GOP chairman, will at last put them over the top.

Love, who would be the first black female Republican in the House, said her campaign is building a stronger voter identification effort for Round 2 after “haphazardly” kicking off her campaign in 2012. She had $147,000 in cash on hand as of March 31, according to Federal Election Commission records.

“I’m better prepared, I’m a better candidate. Having gone through this, I understand the issues so much better, how campaigns work,” Love said. “I have people on the campaign who know exactly what they’re doing. They’ve won races before.”

Love also has a compelling biography. The 37-year-old was born to Haitian immigrants in Brooklyn and joined the Mormon Church after graduating from the University of Hartford. In 2010, she was elected mayor of Saratoga Springs, becoming the first black female mayor in Utah, a state in which 1.3 percent of the population is African-American.

But the GOP will have to get creative to give Matheson the boot: He has survived years of targeting, largely thanks to his centrist views and a voting record that stretches across both sides of the aisle. Voters know — and, by and large, like — the 53-year-old son of the late Democratic Gov. Scott Matheson.

“This is not my first rodeo,” Matheson said. “I’ve been doing this for a little while.”

The GOP has tried — and failed — to label him as a pawn of the left. Case in point: He snubbed Nancy Pelosi in January, instead casting a symbolic vote for Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) for speaker of the House.

“Republicans are always trying to put Matheson into a partisan box,” said Kirk Jowers, a longtime Romney friend and director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah. “The problem is that people know Matheson, they like his dad, they like his record, and Matheson does amazing gymnastics to ensure he can’t easily be put into a box.”

Republicans seem to have finally recognized that attacking Matheson as a typical lefty Democrat doesn’t work; voters don’t buy it. So they’re testing a new argument against him in 2014: Matheson as the affable but ultimately ineffective congressman.

Love’s campaign and Utah Republicans say the incumbent’s voting record leaves him in a political no man’s land, where neither side of the aisle trusts him or considers him their own.

“Jim’s a nice guy. There isn’t anybody that’s disputing that,” Love said. “But this is not about how nice you are. It’s about getting things done.”

Hansen, her campaign manager, said their team is working aggressively to improve the ground game in the district, identify Republican voters and ensure they turn out at the polls.He cited Matheson’s vote against President Barack Obama’s health care law and his vote against repealing it, saying, “Mia Love knows what she believes.”

“Nobody can question whether Jim Matheson is a nice guy,” Hansen said. “The question is, does he really produce for the state of Utah, and does he produce for the 4th Congressional District? Does he try to take too many positions on too many issues?”

The race is already drawing national attention, with both Republicans targeting it as a ripe takeover target and Democrats as a high priority to defend. Matheson is part of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s at-risk incumbent retention program, which offers support with fundraising and recruitment. Last fall, the National Republican Congressional Committee poured $1 million into an anti-Matheson ad campaign.

Matheson and Love each raised sums hovering near $2 million during their first face-off.

Each party has commissioned polls with diverging projections, though both put Matheson in the lead.

A DCCC poll released Wednesday showed Matheson leading Love by 14 percentage points, with a 63 percent job approval rating. A Harper Polling survey released last week by the NRCC shows Love just 3 points behind the Democrat.

Former Utah GOP Chairman Thomas Wright said Matheson is a “man without a country,” who has little power because neither Democrats nor Republicans trust him.

Matheson said he welcomes that message from Republicans, because “if that’s the best argument they’ve got, I’m going to win hands-down.”

“I hear every day from my constituents that that is exactly what they want,” he added. “They are so tired of the partisan bickering in Washington,” he said.

But Jowers called Love a tough opponent. Her party ID gives her a built-in advantage in the conservative 4th District, where Republicans hold a double-digit voter registration advantage and which Mitt Romney carried with two-thirds of the vote.

Love will also likely draw significant outside help. She made national headlines last year when she spoke at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., in August, saying her family story embodied the American dream. Her family history also drew scrutiny, though, when reports circulated a month later that her birth gave her family a ticket to U.S. citizenship.